High Adventure!
by SillyGoy
Summary: Chapter 1 revised. Inspired by Null's newest lewd art, join the sorceress Heidemarie, the paladin Nikka, the rogue Hijikata and a not-so-likable OC as they go around the medieval world of Terra searching for challenge, fame and fortune as the adventurer Band of the Serpent. But! Rumors abound of an ancient evil awakening, bearing the dreaded name "Malonius."


**A/N: Chapter 1 has been revised after someone** _ **finally**_ **gave me some useful feedback that wasn't nothing but mindless praise. I hope you will do the same.**

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 **HIGH ADVENTURE!**

 _A break from the norm by a silly goy_

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The tableau, in my opinion, couldn't have gotten more picturesque. The golden orb that was the glorious sun rose from the floor of the valley, bathing the green, crested expanses of the countryside with light and taking away the nighttime shadow. A mild mist, still clinging to the vestiges of dawn, hung in the air, dispersing slowly but subtly. Beads of dew speckled the leaves of venerable oak and lowly grass alike, and the yellows, blues and reds of flowery meadows were vibrant as the hardy folk from the nearby hamlet opened their doors to another working day. Birds soared high and low on the gentle breeze, singing songs and chirping contentedly when they landed on another perch.

Perhaps I should have been admiring such a perfect sunrise, but at that point in time, I was busy with something else. Sure, I was in a field where flowers bloomed and butterflies flew about, and I was crouched down, but my focus was awfully blithe, uncaring and disrespectful to Mother Nature's vista.

No, I wasn't smelling roses or picking petals while thinking of a distant lover - although, that might have been nice. I was, in an anticlimax, poking something with a stick.

The "something" in question was onion-shaped, blue, and gelatinous from top to bottom, and was about the size of two hands put together. Little, cyan orbs that were stark against the darker cerulean of the body stared curiously at my prod as I poked it again and again, with little success of breaking through its tough jelly skin. It was some sort of viscous, sentient teardrop that appeared to be amusing itself by trying to catch my stick with its mouth. When it finally managed to, it somehow narrowed and crested its beady little eyes in an uncomfortably human expression of satisfaction. It also squeaked happily. How, I wasn't sure.

"Interesting," I understated. I was actually flabbergasted. How an amoebic animal like this might have evolved or been engineered to acquire such intelligence and methods of communication was beyond me.

I pulled, and pulled again, then found myself smiling. The jelly thing was holding onto the stick with its toothless mouth like its life depended on it, and fought fiercely against my attempts to wrench it free. Meanwhile, it had contorted its pearly pair of ocular organs into thin, slanted deltas that could have been a furrowed brow on a human face.

"Cute," I said, despite myself, as I gave up. It squeaked happily again and smiled however it could with its limited features at its victory, however small. Contented to leave it at that, I exhaled with finality, let go of the stick and stood up, brushing my robes off and sweeping my hands over real and imagined creases and clinging pieces of grass. I turned to walk away and made it a few steps before something bumped my foot, and I realized it was following me.

I stopped to give it a mildly annoyed look, exchanging stares, which it took for consent for it to jump onto my shoe. I murmured a few silent curses, scratching my head before trying to shake it off my foot. Needless to say, with the jelly thing's vacuum-like grip, it didn't work. Bobbing up and down like a tensile marshmallow, the cheeky little fellow was clearly enjoying the ride I was giving it.

"Damn it, you little bugger, get off of me," and other such demands whispered off from my lips. After a minute or so of effort, there was the rustle of somebody else's footsteps in the grass, though I feigned ignorance of it.

"It seems," came a quiet, mellifluous feminine voice from behind, "that it's taken a liking to you."

"Yes, that's what I feared," I said, not turning to regard the stranger.

"They're just like dogs, aren't they?"

"Only a tad bit more annoying," I sighed as I gave up. I turned my cloaked figure around and regarded the woman who had approached. Barely did I suppress an appreciative whistle at her sight. "What are they, anyway?"

The first thing that caught my attention were her eyes. Deep, red and bespectacled, they were like rubies that outshone my dull, brown irises. Then, there was her silver hair, long and silken, that cascaded down to the middle of her back and framed her pretty, rosy-cheeked face. I'd have labeled her as suffering from albinism then, but her fair complexion radiated healthiness. Further demonstrating her good bodily humors were her well-endowment and taut, fit musculature. Those wide hips, I concluded then, would have been delightful to grasp and hold.

She held herself like a well-bred aristocrat (which she could have been, for all I knew), hands neatly clasped together at her stomach. Her posture was straight and proper as she turned her cheek a degree and slightly rose an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" she said, soft words flowing from a pair of thin, pink lips. "They're slimes."

"Is that what you call them, then - slimes?"

She wore black, leather shoes with metal buckles. Embracing her from toe to mid thigh were similarly dark but red-trimmed stay-up stockings that drew the eye in and underscored the plump whiteness of what little upper leg was exposed. Loose, detached sleeves in the same color scheme hung from the midpoints of her upper arms. And in contrast to all of this, she wore a tight-fitting, one-piece, white garment that was oddly reminiscent of a swimsuit and emphasized her large and heavy chest. Not bothering to extend towards her thighs, the groin area that it did cover was scandalously highlighted as a result.

The woman nodded, still looking confused. She was about a head shorter than I was, and even in the short distance between us, she had to look up slightly to exchange gazes with me. "Yes," she said, her voice still quiet. "You don't know? They are the most common monster in all of Terra."

The inflection in her words was calm, suppressed, and unassuming. I wondered why in the infinite hells she was being shy, because it took courage to wear something like that in public. With the social conventions that undoubtedly entailed the medieval qualities of this world, how was she not yet hanged or stoned to death for having loose virtue?

The final accoutrements to her costume were a feathered choker and a small red ribbon that crested the crown of her head. If the latter accessory was supposed to add innocence to her outfit, it failed. It only succeeded in making it even naughtier.

Having drank all the outward details of her physicality and uniform, I suppressed a chuckle at how utterly average I looked before her exoticness. Shrouded in a voluminous, hooded robe of matted, light grey wool, there was nothing on my person quite interesting to look at, save for my golden sword-staff.

She spoke, then, before I could, apparently having realized something. "Wait," she said, a small smile tugging at her lips. "Wait. You're joking, aren't you?"

I smiled in kind, and tried in vain again to shake away the slime as it crawled up my robe. "Yes," I lied. "Of course I am."

"Ah." She chuckled then, moving a dainty knuckle to her lips. "You almost got me."

"How do you get them off, though?"

"Here," she ventured, stepping closer. "Let me do it."

She said something then, in a very low whisper. The gravitas of the word's meaning translated into a buzz in the air and a shiver in the ground itself. An arm extended towards the side, her open palm took upon a brilliant radiance that dimmed and coalesced into something awfully mundane. Soon enough, she was holding a porkchop, and the little slime stopped trying to crawl up me when it realized that.

She crouched down, her thick and healthy legs bending easily in a display of flexibility, as she offered the food to the little jelly onion.

"Here you go," she said, in quite a motherly manner.

My interest, at that point, was undoubtedly piqued. "A transdimensional stasis spell?"

"Mm, it's how I pack my things," she nodded, regarding the slime as it munched on the meat. Literally, as in cutting into the cooked muscle and tearing it to shreds. I had thought it would have devoured it whole and digested it with corrosive enzymes. With such advanced facilities like the capability to masticate (somehow) on such a limited form, I was beginning to think it an unnecessarily frivolous creature. "I'm glad that you know. I had you figured for a mage."

"Was it the robes or the staff that gave it away?"

"Both, and the fact that you were poking a slime with a stick," she smiled at the silly image. "I thought you were doing field research."

"In a way, I guess I was."

She then rested her elbows on her knees and cupped her cheeks as she looked up at me. "If you're a fellow sorcerer, then could you show me a spell?"

I pursed my lips in consideration, licking them wet. "Alright. I'll show you." Then I reached into the recesses of my loose-fitting sleeve and pulled out my old Legion coin. Holding it with my thumb and index finger, with my other digits outstretched, I held it high in the air, and turned my cheek to regard my audience.

She chuckled at the joke. It was like music to my ears, a mellisonant song of her joy. "No, silly! Not legerdemain. I want you to cast a real spell."

"May I ask why?" I asked, as I pocketed the coin.

The woman - clearly young, now that I had taken a good look at her - stood up then, and took a deep breath. Resting four fingertips on her ample cleavage, she began: "My name is Heidemarie Schnaufer. I'm scouting for candidates for my fledgling adventurer party, the Band of the Serpent."

"The Band of the Serpent," I echoed, a little incredulous at the lack of creativity.

"Because 'Dragon' was already taken," she said, rising from her crouched stance. "Quite unfortunate, isn't it?"

"It's a little comical, yes. But an adventurer party, you say? Going around the land, searching for challenge, fame and fortune?"

"Exactly," she nodded. "We are currently commissioned by Lady Clostermann on a particularly challenging quest, one that, I think, necessitates another member in our party. I was intending to go to the local fighter's guild in search for candidates, but I wasn't expecting one in here of all places," she said, as she gestured at the grassy field around us.

"And how do you know I'm not some crazed fool who stole himself a fancy staff?" I smiled amiably, raising my enchanted weapon an inch. Actually made mostly of steel, its golden appearance was due only to a thin, superficial coating of the substance. It was as tall as I was, and surmounted by a cross with ornamented, multifarious bars. This was actually the handle and crossguard of my sword, with the rod as its scabbard.

"I don't," she answered smoothly, "which is why I'm asking you to cast a spell, if you wouldn't mind. Are you open to joining us?"

"Hm," I mused, putting a thoughtful fist to my chin. It wasn't hard to come to a decision, truth be told. For the past three days since I had supposedly perished and arrived here for some inexplicable reason, I had been doing nothing but strolling about, thinking, passively collecting information through eavesdropping and careful schmoozing, and otherwise doing nothing important. Some engaging activity would be good. "Yes," I said with finality. "I am. What kind of spell are you hoping to see?"

It was her turn to smile, clearly happy at my openness to her solicitation. She stepped closer to me as she spoke, her hips sashaying something hypnotizing in her gait. "Combat spells, preferably. Pyromancy, cryomancy… judging from your rather down-to-earth look, you must be a geomancer. Am I correct?"

"I am all those things," I admitted, "and I say this without boast nor pride."

She turned her cheek a degree as she stopped close, regarding me with a diagonal stare in that subtly domineering manner of nobility. And yet, somehow, her voice was without imperiousness, without sarcasm, and full of genuinity. "Is that so? Consider my interest piqued. Please, show me."

I did not know whether the look she was giving me was intentional or not, but it was the kind of stare a woman uses to drive men on to herculean feats. The dichotomy between her aristocratic bearing and demure cadence of voice was stark, and yet the two mannerisms blended together in a charming mixture that gave her a unique sort of maidenliness, even with her scandalous outfit. Magnifying this was her need to look up at me with her relatively short stature.

I will confess: it turned me on.

She gestured, then, to the nearby hill that rose in the misty distance towards my left, raising her hand in a graceful, beckoning gesture, like a mistress calling for her bondsmen. I followed her gaze, and beheld three very radiant spheres of light coalescing out of nothing in the very air.

"A shooting gallery?" I asked, a little amused.

"Mhm," she hummed. "Snuff them all out one by one, but with a different elemental school of magic for each spell. Show me your mastery of the arts, mister omnimancer."

"I am hardly a master," I countered her playfulness with humility. "All I can do is use multiple elements at once."

"Which is what I would like to see." She stepped back, then, giving me a wide berth for spellcasting. "Whenever you are ready, ser mage."

"Alright," I said, as I turned to face the triumvirate of targets. I hadn't had a chance to use destructive magic since translating uncomfortably into this plane, so I relished the opportunity to do so. As tough as it is to admit, I also felt like I needed to live up to her expectations - a feeling brought about by her specially endearing demeanor. I began to take deep breaths then, opting to do it by the book.

For the uninitiated, sorcery is a matter of projecting one's will to manipulate the very essence of time and space itself. It is both a science and an art that demands its students to devote their entire lives to it, with unlimited possibility as the reward of a lifetime of learning. The first step in spellcraft is to achieve clarity of thought; then, you must have clarity of purpose; then, clarity of will. Impose this will upon the world and it will bend itself to you. Simply put, magic is about wishing for something to happen, and I was glad it was the same here as it was elsewhere.

The processes of spellweaving are complex and often imperceptible, with the most visible portions being physical gesture. A sorcerer's movement at the terminus of channeling is unique to himself, and mine was simply raising my sword-staff and lowering it with juddering finality, like an ecclesiarch finalizing a censure. With its pommel striking the ground, I intoned with resolve: _"Flammeus!"_

The ball of flame shot out from the cross of my sword-staff without preamble, tracing a faint curve in the air with its fiery tail before slamming home onto the leftmost of Heidemarie's glow orbs, annihilating the invisible framework that held the thing together and collapsing it just as itself decomposed from the impact, with a fierce detonation that echoed in the open country.

I turned to the woman, and said matter-of-factly, "That's pyromancy."

She clapped her hands twice, a smile curving her lips. "Now, show me cryomancy, please."

Her eagerness to see more spurred me on. Turning again to my targets, I took the usual deep, calm breaths made compulsory by magical academy practical examinations everywhere yet were exorbitantly difficult in any practical situation. Thinking of something dour and sullen instead of lively and energetic this time, I raised and brought down the pommel of my sword-staff again. _"Glacies,"_ I muttered.

It was an icicle as long and as thick as a forearm that materialized out from my staff, shooting straight unlike the fireball I cast earlier. Spearing through the air like it were desperate, it didn't take even a second for it to cleave through the second glow orb, shattering into a thousand pieces even as its target disintegrated.

I turned to Heidemarie again. "That's cryomancy."

She was grinning this time, giving me three claps which, although curt as an applause, were still welcome praise. "Impressive. Geomancy, now."

"As you request," I nodded, readying myself for the third spell. Going through the same mental routines, I was surprised that I was encountering difficulty in synchronizing with the aura of the earth, and when connection was made, it was rather tenuous. Reinforcing the link by dumping three times more mana than the spell required, my delay in casting was awfully palpable. The weave was wobbly even when shored up, but I pushed on with it anyway, for perfect spellcraft never happened on a battlefield; and if I was to join the Band of the Serpent, then I would certainly be involved in many conflicts.

I trilled belatedly: _"Tempero Terra!"_

The dirt before my feet then quavered and shifted, before rising into the air as a head-sized ball of compacted soil and grass. Tempero Terra was not an attack spell; rather, it gave the user freeform control over any nearby geology. As such, there were two parts to my actions: forming something dangerous with what I had available, and then hurling that deadly thing at the final target.

Tugging at the invisible skeins that tied my very mind to the ugly floating sphere, I shifted my vision between it and the distant glow orb. Sighting down like a marksman with no stubs to aid him, I had to manually aim it. There were none of these concerns with Flammeus and Glacies, as their respective projectiles went wherever I willed them to at the end of the weave. Again, I delayed, and grimaced in concentration, loose particles of dirt dropping down from the ball meanwhile. Seconds went by before it finally left with a sonic boom.

It went faster than the speed of sound, and had already impacted with an impressively high plume of much-abused soil by the time the inevitable thunderclap shook my very core and deafened me a little. I had closed my eyes from the shock, and when I opened them, I noticed that my attack had hit the face of the hill, making a shallow crater. The glow orb, floating serenely above that, winked out then, having run out of mana.

"I missed," I stated the obvious, although genuinely surprised when I shouldn't have been. Smacking my ear in an attempt to get rid of the sudden tinnitus, I then turned to Heidemarie, who was giggling madly.

She wasn't laughing, she was giggling, the mirth spilling out anyway from her attempted suppression, trying in vain to hide her smile with a hand over her mouth. "Alright," she began, still fighting a set of dainty, charming little hiccups. "Alright," she breathed, "Alright. Okay. I was not expecting _that_."

I grinned. "I told you, didn't I? I am no master. Geomancy, as you've seen, is my weakest area."

She finally collected herself, staring at nothing in particular. Then, when she and I exchanged gazes, she turned away and began to giggle again.

"Oh, come on!" I protested, as sanguine as she was.

"Right, right," she said between hiccups, holding her free hand out placatingly. "Right. Okay." She took few moments before slapping her cheeks to finally calm herself. "Sorry about that. That was just- that was something else."

"Oh, please. Rub it in," I said gamely.

"Regardless," she ventured, steering the conversation towards proper waters. "What you've shown me is impressive indeed. I myself know only two elements. To be able to use three - proficiency aside - is, as you know, something of a rarity. I'd be glad to take you into the Band, but there are a couple of other things I would ask of you."

"And what might those be?" I inquired.

"Your name, for one," she smiled disarmingly, stepping close once more. "You haven't introduced yourself to me yet, ser mage."

"Ah, of course. Rude of me. I am Sirius Aeternum," I said, bowing formally with a hand over my chest, which I then proffered. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Schnaufer."

To my surprise, she frowned. "No, ser Sirius. I would shake your hand later, after my other request."

I dropped my hand, perplexed. "Another test?"

She shook her head, adopting a solemn tone of voice. "No. I just want you to watch, as I cast a spell."

"Will it be like my Tempero Terra?" I jested, evoking a brief smile from her.

"It won't be as funny, unfortunately. Now, please watch."

I didn't respond vocally to that, opting to nod instead while running my tongue along my lips in anticipation, wetting them anew. Heidemarie closed her eyes then, and began to breathe deeply, furrowing her brow in deep concentration. She raised her hands from the sides, palms faced downwards as whispers began to flow from her lips. I pulled back my hood to listen better, before realizing that I couldn't understand her incantation. Whatever that tongue was, it was awfully sibilant, with generous helpings of voiceless, serpentine alveolar fricatives.

Incidentally, our surroundings became darker, even though the skies were clear. I stepped back instinctively, wondering whether this was a part of her channeling. I was soon to be proven right when a bright, radiant disc formed at her feet, quite clearly sucking out all the luminosity in the immediate atmosphere with how skewed and distorted things appeared around it, Heidemarie included. A sense of dread began to well up in my chest as the disc morphed, and took upon the pattern of a pentagram replete with bands of strange and esoteric sigils looping all over it.

"A summoning circle," I muttered in disbelief, having seen enough to recognize one.

I was already holding my sword-staff horizontally and gripping the handle of the blade when she finally cried out, _"Invitare Daemonicus!"_

There was a blinding flash of light as the pentagram returned all the luminance it had stolen in an instant. I stumbled back, cursing loudly, having barely expected that. My experience with summoning malign creatures till that point did not involve retinal burn and persistent afterimages. Helpless, I was on a knee when my vision returned to something more or less serviceable, and, when I wrenched my sight up from the ground to look at Heidemarie's way, I stared dumbfounded at something I was pretty sure she had no right in calling out from whatever passed as Hell here.

"I sincerely hope you know what you're doing," I said, blinking feverishly.

It was a vaguely humanoid creature of pure midnight, possessed of form indeed, but only half-heartedly when it came to substance. Near as it was, it still registered on my consciousness as something of a distant silhouette. Its skin was the drape of the nighttime sky, sprinkled with stars that did not twinkle in their truest reflection. I could just make out the form of its hard-cornered, faceted head, and from whose center stared out a single glowing eye of pure, malevolent crimson.

And it went just as it came, as her voice sounded off, _"Dispel!"_

It took her half a minute to recite the incantation and weave the spell, yet only a split second to get rid of the daemon. It puffed away in a cloud of black smoke that easily disintegrated in the air, revealing in its cloudy wake a worried-looking Heidemarie.

"What the hell was that?" I asked, admirably putting my thoughts into one concise sentence.

"It's my main method of attack," she began to explain, as I stood up. My sword-staff was already half drawn, then, but I sheathed it again, thinking it the most politic thing to do at the moment. Perhaps I thought right, because she continued, "I, as a sorcerer, specialize in metaphysics and therefore in summoning."

She gulped, placing a hand on her chest to better fasten her courage. I didn't quite know how I was looking at her at that point, but I surely wasn't smiling. "I know what you're thinking - that I should probably burned, hanged or stoned for violating Ruven's Law. That you think I'm crazy, that I'm a heretic, or that I'm stupid. Or any combination of those three-"

"You're right," I interjected, intending to inject humor into the suddenly dreary conversation. Unfortunately, it only made her frown even more, and her lip quiver.

The silver-haired maiden breathed in, sharply. "I summoned that Neuroi as a test. A test to see whether you'd be fine with having a summoner as a fellow party member. Whether," she intoned slowly, "whether you'd be fine with that, and would be open to trusting me."

I realized I was frowning. Scowling, too. Running my fingers over my hair in a rather blatant expression of sudden and unwanted stress, I tried to beat my facial expression down into something that was more neutral. I succeeded in straightening out the scowl, but unfortunately, my lips still sagged downward. As for what to say, I couldn't find anything meaningful to form a statement.

"But," she sighed, disappointment palpable in her voice. She was holding onto one of the feathers of her choker to steel herself as she revealed all of this to me. "It seems you're just like the others. So small-minded and superstitious, blinded by strictures whose weight are due only to their age. I should have known."

"Please don't be so presumptuous," I cut in then, as she began to gesture towards me, in a manner that was more brusque than I had intended. "You don't know what I'm thinking."

She appeared to be astonished, and blinked twice. "What?"

"So you summon daemons. So what?" I said, trying to give order to my racing thoughts and vocalize them. "You are not the first summoner I've met. Daemonology, like all other schools of magic, is a respectable and useful one to study, replete with its benefits and dangers."

I scratched my head vigorously, thinking of what to say next. "As long as you know what you're doing, it's fine. And you seem to know what you're doing. You do know what you're doing, right?"

She nodded dumbly. "Y-yes. Yes, I do. I've spent most of my life practicing this craft."

"Alright, good. I am no Order academic content with his codified spells and platitudinous tomes of 'wisdom.' I won't hunt you down or whatever," I reassured, already exhausted at having high emotions so early in the morning. "So alright, if that revelation was all, then are we good?"

Heidemarie, it seemed, was just as confused as I was, rubbing her bare shoulder as she took in my answers and shrugged, "I guess we are."

I took in a deep breath. "Excellent. Now, I'd offer you a handkerchief, but I don't have one on my person at the moment."

Her embarrassment was palpable. "Am I crying?" she asked.

"No, but you look like you're about to."

"Am I?" she said, wiping her eyes with perfunctory brushes and actually drawing moisture with her fingertips. "Sorry. I've done this lots of times, but this is still quite a confession for me. I was expecting you to yell at me, or whatever."

"Alright," I said simply, letting the matter drop for now.

We spent the next few minutes in relative silence, with Heidemarie summoning a clean cloth from her personal dimension to dab away her scant tears with. Meanwhile, I was holding my wrist, trying to get rid of the shakes. Her way of confession equated a near-death experience in terms of shock value. The daemon that she had called a 'Neuroi' regarded me as if my soul were naked and vulnerable, and without my usual powers, it could have been, for all I knew. It was strange, how half an hour ago, I was poking a slime with a stick. Speaking of which…

I looked to where the jelly fellow was supposed to be at, but where only a half-eaten porkchop remained. "The slime took off."

The sorceress, who had been staring off into the distance, was understandably distracted as she looked to me, her eyes still a bit red and her cheeks with a hint of flushing. "The what? Oh. Yeah. Probably from your Tempero Terra," she jested with a smile.

"If it wasn't your Invitare," I returned the joke. "Speaking of dangerous spells, why didn't you tell me you were going to summon a daemon before doing it?"

"It's not dangerous!" she defended. "I take every precaution when it comes to calling the Neuroi. I make sure to close every possible loophole in the master-servant contract thrice while I recite the incantation."

"Uh-huh," I nodded, not quite wanting to bring up, out of fatigue, that needing to do safety checks thrice was a mark of danger. "But also, another thing: you dispelled the daemon almost right after you summoned it. I had my blade half drawn then. What would you have done if I charged at you?"

"Remember the flash of light?" she asked.

"Hard not to."

"That was a branding spell. At my command, I could have put you to sleep. Then I'd have erased your memories of our encounter, and walked away. I was actually going to activate the Somniare on you when told me to stop being presumptuous."

So it was a close call. "Ah. Hasty, but smart."

She withered a bit under my gaze. "Sorry," she said lowly then, wrinkling the handkerchief in her hands. "For being judgmental."

I shook my head. "Don't be. I fault you for nothing big. So, anyway," I stood up from the grass, walking towards her as she rose in kind. "Could I be what the Band was looking for?"

"More than it could have hoped, actually. Another sorcerer," she said, seemingly ecstatic at the prospect and showing it with an amiable smile while proffering her hand for me to shake. "Welcome to the Band of the Serpent, Sirius Aeternum. I suppose. My, things sure escalated quickly this morning."

I took it. A ghost of an expression flashed on her face for the briefest of instances at the sensation of my rough and calloused hands. Similarly, it took effort from me not to emote over the intoxicating smoothness of her palm, and the daintiness of her fingers. Her grip, however, was strong, and matched mine evenly in terms of strength.

"I look forward to adventuring with you, Miss Schnaufer," I confessed, as we dropped the shake.

"That's too formal, Sirius," she mildly admonished, placing four fingertips on her chest to point at herself. "Please, call me Heidi."

And so, with those heartfelt words, my life of adventuring began.


End file.
